Civil Rights Commission Finds Little Academic Benefit in Diversity

[StickerShock]

<p><a href=“http://www.usccr.gov/[/url]”>http://www.usccr.gov/&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

<p>A report issued today by the US Commission on Civil RIghts reports that there is little evidence of significant improvement in academic achievement derived from racial & ethnic diversity in secondary & elementary schools.</p>

[curmudgeon]

<p>WASHINGTON, DC – Less than one week before the U.S. Supreme Court hears oral argument in two significant cases involving the use of racial benefits to reduce minority isolation in elementary and secondary education, the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights today issued an important briefing report on The Benefits of Racial and Ethnic Diversity in Elementary and Secondary Education. The report finds that social science studies provide scant proof of the benefits for racial and ethnic groups attributed to diversity in elementary and secondary education. Specifically, the Commission finds that “there is little evidence that racial and ethnic diversity in elementary and secondary schools results in significant improvements in academic performance; studies on the effect of school racial composition on academic achievement often suggest modest and inconsistent benefits.” Similarly, the Commission notes that “studies of whether racial and ethnic diversity result in significant social and non-educational benefits report varied results.” Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds commented that “the academic literature really provides little or no support for the view that racial preferences in student assignment serve any compelling interest. In my view, the evidence, suggests that these preferences do not provide significant academic benefits to minority children that would compensate for the moral costs of government’s use of racial classifications.” The Commission approved the report by a vote of 4 to 2. Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds and Commissioners Jennifer Braceras, Peter Kirsanow, and Ashley Taylor voted in favor. Commissioners Michael Yaki and Arlan Melendez voted against. Vice Chair Abigail Thernstrom did not participate in the vote. ### ______________________________________________________________________________The U.S. Commission on Civil Rights is an independent, bipartisan agency charged with monitoring federal civil rights enforcement. Members include Chairman Gerald A. Reynolds, Vice Chairman Abigail Thernstrom, and Commissioners Jennifer C. Braceras, Peter N. Kirsanow, Arlan D. Melendez, Ashley L. Taylor, and Michael Yaki. Kenneth L. Marcus is Staff Director. Commission meetings are open to the media and general public.
624 9th Street, N.W.• Suite 700 •Washington, DC 20425
Ph: (202) 376-7700 •Fx: (202) 376-7672C</p>

<p>First let us remember who is talking. Political hacks, hacking politically. Second it was 3-2 for release of the “report” with one NV. Third, “moral costs”? You have got to be joking. </p>

<p>And fourth, probably most importantly who here thought that desegration had at its center the idea of improving academic performance? I always thought the court decisions were based on equal protection and fairness under the law. That segregation was by definition unequal treatment. That separate and equal could never be equal.</p>

<p>P.S. And the timing is just a little bit suspect wouldn’t you say? LOL</p>

[xiggi]

<p>It’s pretty simple … the moment you see the name of Peter Kirsanow on any document, you are better off to throw it away. Rarely has a person be so ill-deserving of a public appointment. The fact that such a vile individual sits at the U.S. Commission on Civil Rights speaks volumes about our amazing capacity for ridicule.</p>

[curmudgeon]

<p>What’s the skinny on Kirsanow xig? I’m too lazy to google right now.</p>

[StickerShock]

<p>

Political hacks, hacking politically

That’s a good one!</p>

<p>However, the report is not talking about desegregation. Of course we’ve moved beyond seperate but equal. The report is about current racial preferences in student assignment. Next week the Supreme Court is scheduled to hear oral arguments in cases involving Louisville & Seattle schools and whether their use of race-based assignments, which are discriminatory, serve a compelling interest. The cases have enormous significance & could impact how Americans are free to hire, apply for adoptions…the list goes on and on.</p>

[JHS]

<p>Ha! I’m trying to read this to see if it has any substance at all, but when I click on the link at the CRC’s home page all I get is a blank screen that freezes and can’t be closed.</p>

<p>I should resist the temptation to view this as a metaphor for the whole project, but I can’t.</p>

[xiggi]

<p>Cur, this might lift the veil a bit:</p>

<p>

Kirsanow, speaking during a USCCR hearing in Detroit on July 19, raised the possibility of internment camps for the mass detention of Arab Americans. According to the ADC statement, “Kirsanow did not condemn this idea, but raised it as a serious and reasonable possibility in the event of future terrorist attacks against the United States.” </p>

<p>Kirsanow blatantly remarked, “if future terrorists come from the same ethnic group that attacked the World Trade Centre, you can forget about civil rights.” </p>

<p>It seemed clear that Kirsanow was condoning the internment of Arab Americans in a manner similar to Japanese Americans and Japanese immigrants during World War II.

</p>

[xiggi]

<p>And, for a trip down memory lane, here’s a VERY old discussion. Interesting to note how the CC cast of characters changed! </p>

<p><a href=“http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/48086.html[/url]”>http://www.collegeconfidential.com/discus/messages/70/48086.html&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[JHS]

<p>Oh, this is hilarious. What they did was invite two liberals and two conservatives to a “conference,” had them each make a presentation, asked questions and then made findings that tracked the conservatives’ positions. The whole thing took three hours. The speakers were not asked for comprehensive presentations, and there was no independent research or review of their sources. One of the conservatives was the husband (and frequent co-author) of one of the members of the Commission, who participated enthusiastically in the show-trial but abstained from the final vote. (He, by the way, offered no research at all, but rather a legal-philosophical attack on the use of racial classifications for any purpose that essentially repeated an amicus brief he and his wife had filed with the Supreme Court.) </p>

<p>You know what? I think this is a legitimate topic for debate and reasearch. But the U.S. Civil Rights Commission has made absolutely no contribution to the field here. Not only is this political hacks hacking politically, they are doing it laughably badly. This whole thing is the scholarly equivalent of a fart joke.</p>

[tsdad]

<p>Gerald Reynolds used to be the Assistant Secretary of the Office for Civil Rights, US Department of ED until he was dumped by the administration. He was a power company lawyer in Kansas City. He knew nothing about student-related civil rights issues. He surrounded himself with a bunch of right-wing attorneys he put in career positions in headquarters. A political hack of the highest caliber. His tenure at OCR was reason 398 why I retired.</p>

[LakeWashington]

<p>Unke G.W. Bush, at least Bill Clinton sought out the civil rights perspectives of people he didn’t agree with, like conservatives Elaine Chao and Abigail Thernstrom. Both of whom don’t know what they are talking about. LOL.</p>

<p>And by the way, Chao’s career benefited from a most prevalent kind of affirmative action; nepotism. That’s Mrs. Senator Mitch McConnell Chao. Didn’t McConnell also get his son a job on capitol hill? Oh but of course he was ‘qualified.’ As was Rehnquist’s and Cheney’s daughters. Let’s not get into Congressman Curt Weldon’s daughter. Or even Senator Lisa “Thanks Dad” Murkowski of Alaska.</p>

[LakeWashington]

<p>Oops!!! Meant to say “Unlike G.W. Bush…”</p>

[EmanuelGoldstein]

<p>Despite a generation of ‘redressing past wrongs,’ the gaps among groups has proved persistent, putting into doubt both the initial justification of affirmative action and its efficacy in removing inequities. Also, some groups, particularly Hispanics, did not have quite a clear claim to being previously wronged. Thus, a new justification was adopted: diversity is a good in and of itself, so as to render criticism irrelevant while ensuring equality of outcomes in admissions among groups by use of preferences. Some evidence that diversity has a negative effect if any, at least as percieved by students, faculty and administrators, <a href=“http://ijpor.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/1/8[/url]”>http://ijpor.oxfordjournals.org/cgi/content/abstract/15/1/8&lt;/a&gt; , whose abstract in part states:

This article evaluates the role of survey research in supporting the diversity model—the argument that increased racial diversity in college enrollment both enriches the educational experience for students of all racial and ethnic backgrounds and also improves relations between students of different races. We found that much of the supporting data suffers from methodological defects, which range from poor item formulation to interpretive problems linked to selective recall and social desirability response set. We utilized a more indirect approach that asked members of the university community non-controversial questions about their perceptions and experiences, and then correlated their responses with an independent empirical measure of diversity…</p>

<p>When student, faculty, and administrators; evaluations of the educational and racial atmosphere were correlated with the percentage of minority students enrolled at a college or university, the predicted positive associations of educational benefits and inter-racial understanding failed to appear. Thus, the findings failed to support the argument that enrollment diversity improves the education and racial milieu at American colleges and universities. Our study also raises questions about survey instruments and designs that affect inferences about respondents’ beliefs and behavior.

Erm, that last bit sounds like the Bradley Effect ( see <a href=“http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15366427/site/newsweek/[/url]”>http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/15366427/site/newsweek/&lt;/a&gt; ), in which whites tell a pollster they will vote for a black candidate when they actually won’t. Perhaps bombardment of students with the notion that diversity is good affects their response to polls?</p>

<p>

First, we chart the development of the legal argument over affirmative action, in order to show how data on campus attitudes became central to a debate that once centered on evidence of the practice or effects of prior societal discrimination…</p>

<p>The argument that racial diversity is beneficial for all students, or the campus community at large, can be operationalized as a set of hypotheses that increasing black student enrollment (enrollment diversity) in predominantly white student bodies will produce a better educational environment in general, greater attention to and satisfaction with the quality of education, and better relations between white students and students of color [heretofore referred to as the diversity model]…</p>

<p>Results…</p>

<p>The top row of Table I shows small but statistically significant relationships (p<.01) between enrollment diversity and four of the six dependent variables–student satisfaction with their university experience, the quality of their education, their assessment of student work efforts, and their complaints of having personally experienced discrimination. In every case, however, the significant correlations were in the direction opposite those predicted by the diversity model. As the proportion of black students enrolled at the institution rose, student satisfaction with their university experience dropped, as did assessments of the quality of their education, and the work efforts of their peers… </p>

<p>Although the correlations were low, it is unusual for hypothesis testing of such a clearly specified model to produce a reversal of signs on all operational measures that produce statistically significant correlations. [Black enrollment ranged from 0 to 43 percent; historically black college students were excluded from the analysis.]</p>

<p>The same pattern held for the faculty sample’s evaluation of the educational milieu. Among faculty members enrollment diversity was negatively related to perceptions of the quality of education, the academic abilities of students, and the work efforts of students, with all correlations again significant at the .01 level. However, assessments of race relations were in line with the model’s predictions…</p>

<p>This bifurcation of evaluations between educational ratings and minority relations appeared among administrators as well. Like the students, administrators perceived declining educational quality and students’ skill as the proportion of black enrollment rose; like the faculty, [and unlike the students] they also perceived less racial discrimination and better treatment of minority students…</p>

<p>Two of the items, satisfaction with university experience and unfair treatment, are behavioral self-reports…</p>

<p>In the student sample both self-reports as well as two of four institutional characterizations produced statistically significant findings that were the reverse of those predicted by the diversity model. This weakens the possibility that their perceptions of the institution represent ‘third person’ effects at variance with their own personal experience…</p>

<p>Enrollment diversity was positively related to experiencing unfair treatment after the effects of all those variables were controlled. That is, enrollment diversity contributed to the incidence of encounters perceived as discriminatory rather than decreasing them, after controlling for the effects of a student’s membership in a historically victimized group…</p>

<p>Enrollment diversity was inversely related to faculty satisfaction with the quality of education, the work effort of the student body…</p>

<p>We found that much of the data supporting the diversity model suffers from methodological defects, which range from poor item formulation [survey questions] to interpretive problems linked to selective recall and a social desirability response set. Further, there are inherent limitations in research designs that adduce success or failure of a policy intended to affect behavior simply by asking the affected parties whether they think it is working. (This is especially true when the policy is presented as a moral imperative that is central to the mission of the institution [Bradley Effect?].) For example, one wouldn’t evaluate the success of a program to reduce teenage pregnancy on the basis of an attitude survey of teenagers, rather than from epirical data on changes in the pregnancy rate. [Their method was to ask non-controversial questions about perceptions and experiences and correlate them with enrollment diversity.]…</p>

<p>When student evaluations of the educational and racial atmosphere were correlated with the percentage of black students enrolled at a college or university, the predicted positive associations of educational benefits and inter-racial understanding failed to appear. A pattern of statistically significant associations appeared, but it was in the opposite [i.e. negative] direction from that predicted by the diversity model. The results were clear and consistent with regard to the measures of the educational milieu. They were echoed by equally consistent patterns of responses among faculty and administrators.</p>

<p>

</p>

<p>Blacks were chosen as the measure of enrollment diversity because “the legal and social debate has been focused primarily on this group.”</p>

<p>The study also details in short the flaws of other tests, namely asking flawed questions like ‘How much has a diverse student body at your school helped?’</p>

<p>Affirmative action is increasingly touted as a way to provide diversity for the non-beneficiaries. Basically, let’s haul in the ‘people of color’ (Asians are honorary whites in this regard) to please our customers. That these people fail more frequently due to being placed at the wrong level is of little concern. Indeed, Richard Sander, a UCLA professor detailing the extent of failure of blacks in law schools, was vehemently criticized for his work. He basically demonstrated that blacks are recieving lower grades and very likely passing the bar at lower rates because they were admitted to schools a bit beyond their ken. <a href=“http://www.law.ucla.edu/sander/Systemic/final/SanderFINAL.pdf[/url]”>http://www.law.ucla.edu/sander/Systemic/final/SanderFINAL.pdf&lt;/a&gt;&lt;/p&gt;

[calmom]

<p>Wow, Xiggi… I’m amazed. You and I actually agree on something. (Re Kirsinaw)… will wonders never cease?</p>