> College program has little impact
>
> While the Talented 20 was introduced as "ground-breaking,'' most students
> in the first class already met admission standards.
>
> By BARRY KLEIN and STEPHEN HEGARTY
>
> =A9 St. Petersburg Times, published September 3, 2000
>
>
> When Gov. Jeb Bush called a news conference last week to declare his One
> Florida plan a success, he barely mentioned the Talented 20, its best-known
> component.
>
> There's a reason: In the fierce battle over how to increase student
> diversity in Florida universities, the governor's much-touted admission
> guarantee has all the firepower of a popgun.
>
> A computer analysis of the first Talented 20 class shows that less than 1
> percent of its 22,500 members could benefit from Bush's promise of
> automatic admission to a Florida university.
>
> That's a total of 145 students.
>
> All the rest met the state standards for admission to a Florida university,
> regardless of the class rank on which the Talented 20 is based.
>
> One of them is Sean Bierle, a graduate of Robinson High School in Tampa.
> When he got a letter notifying him of his Talented 20 status, he threw it
> away.
>
> He was already in at the University of Florida.
>
> "I think the program has a good intent, but I don't know that it's going to
> affect many people that aren't already going to college," said Bierle, 18.
> "It didn't affect me."
>
> The state officials who designed Bush's guarantee don't dispute the Times
> analysis.
>
> But they say the Talented 20 -- which reserves a university seat for any
> student who graduates in the top 20 percent of their high school -- was
> expected to benefit only a small slice of those students. Most of them are
> minorities in the state's lowest-performing schools.
>
> In fact, Bush's aides now make a point of emphasizing the guarantee's
> symbolic value.
>
> "It sends a message," said John Winn, the governor's education coordinator.
> "It says, hey, if you work hard to achieve within your educational
> environment, you are a desirable candidate for higher education."
>
> That is not the way the Talented 20 was portrayed when it was introduced in
> November, or how it was sold during the testy three months in which it went
> from concept to law.
>
> Bush and university system officials then characterized the Talented 20 as
> a "ground-breaking" tool. Combined with other changes, including increased
> financial aid and reforms in K-12, they said the guarantee would enhance
> racial diversity on college campuses even after racial preferences were
> banned.
>
> So far, however, the Talented 20's primary value seems to be as a mailing
> list.
>
> "It helps us identify which kids in what high schools we can recruit," said
> John Barnhill, the admissions director at Florida State University. "It
> certainly isn't changing the way we do business."
>
> Critics of One Florida, especially the NAACP, which sued to halt
> implementation of the guarantee, see other problems.
>
> The most important, they say, is fairness.
>
> The governor's plan gave Florida's 67 school districts wide latitude in
> determining how to calculate their Talented 20. The result was a hodgepodge
> of methods.
>
> Some districts used weighted grade point averages, which provide extra
> points for tougher classes; some did not. Some counted certain magnet
> programs separately; some did not.
>
> But the most striking differences are those within individual school
> districts.
>
> It took a 4.48 GPA to make the Talented 20 at Miami's Palmetto High School,
> but only a 2.6 at Miami's Edison High School a few miles away. Students at
> Ridgewood High School in Pasco County needed at least a 3.65 to qualify.
> But students at Pasco's Zephyrhills High needed only a 2.77.
>
> "That's just absurd," said John Newton, the attorney for the NACCP. "How
> can that be fair?"
>
> A simple concept
>
> Opponents say such distortions are what happens when education reforms are
> grounded in political calculations.
>
> Like many of the people who object strongly to One Florida's repudiation of
> racial preferences, Adoro Obi Nweze is convinced the admission guarantee
> was rushed into place to pre-empt Ward Connerly's attempt this year to
> overturn affirmative action.
>
> If Connerly's initiatives had made it on the November ballot, said Nweze,
> the president of the NAACP's Florida chapter, black voters would have
> flocked to the polls to defeat it.
>
> Conventional wisdom says that a large black turnout would hurt Jeb's
> brother, George W. Bush, the Republican nominee for President.
>
> Hence, One Florida.
>
> "Anyone who thinks otherwise is kidding themselves," Nweze said.
>
> State officials, including university system Chancellor Adam Herbert, say
> the governor's plan simply recognizes social and legal realities.
>
> One way or the other, they say, racial preferences are on the way out in
> the United States. It could be via the courts, as happened in Texas, or it
> could be a Connerly-style ballot initiative, as happened in California.
>
> At least with One Florida, "we'll have alternatives in place," said Justin
> Sayfie, a Bush spokesman.
>
> The primary architect of those alternatives is John Winn, a former middle
> school teacher who headed the effort that produced the admission guarantee.
>
> He looked at how California's minority enrollment plummeted after
> Connerly's initiative passed there in 1995. He looked at the Texas
> experience, paying special attention to the impact of the 10 percent
> admission guarantee Jeb's brother signed into law three years ago.
>
> While different in some respects, the Florida and Texas plans share a
> critical element: Their impact is directly proportional to the degree in
> which their high schools are segregated.
>
> It's a simple concept: At schools where minorities are in the majority,
> logic dictates they will fill a major share of the slots at the top of
> their graduating class.
>
> But Texas high schools are considerably smaller than Florida's, which meant
> officials there only had to go to 10 percent to add a significant number of
> minorities to their applicant pool.
>
> Even after going to 20 percent, Florida added just 145.
>
> "If this plan is designed to pick up some more minority students, they
> would have to go to 40 percent," said Maxwell Jackson, the director of
> guidance at Shanks High School in Gadsden County, a low-performing school
> with a large African-American population.
>
> But that would have made the GPA disparities between Florida schools even
> wider.
>
> University system officials said they never considered reaching any deeper
> than 20 percent. And they downplay the impact of the disparities, saying
> there is no fairness issue since the plan only ranks students within the
> same school.
>
> Some school administrators, however, still think there could be perverse
> consequences.
>
> Barnhill, the admissions director at FSU, said the admissions guarantee
> could entice students into taking easier classes to pump up their GPAs.
>
> "We've seen it with some scholarship programs," he said.
>
> Ben Koenig, the principal at Godby High School in Leon County, said the
> guarantee could lead to school-shopping. The GPA cutoff to qualify for the
> Talented 20 at his school was 3.5. That's considerably lower than the
> minimum at other schools in his district.
>
> "Sooner or later some of those students are going to think to transfer to
> our school to get in the Talented 20," Koenig said. "I'm not sure that's
> what the governor had in mind."
>
> Carmen Brown, the admissions director at Florida International University
> in Miami, has a more fundamental concern.
>
> The Talented 20, she said, encourages Florida universities to accept
> students who may not be ready for higher education. In Dade County, some
> high school graduates still speak English as a second language.
>
> "It's important that we evaluate these students very closely," Brown said.
> "Otherwise, we may be just setting them up to fail."
>
> Winn agrees with that cautionary note. But he said it's equally important
> not to deny students an opportunity they have earned.
>
> "All we're saying is the kid who works hard in school, who succeeds,
> deserves a shot at higher education," he said. "That's the real fairness
> issue."
>
> Avoiding a meltdown
>
> It took Florida just 15 weeks to eliminate racial preferences, a fast
> schedule for the biggest change to university admissions policies since
> court-ordered desegregation.
>
> Opponents say that timetable was ridiculous.
>
> "If they had spent a year or two working out the problems, this might have
> been a good plan," said Newton, the NAACP attorney. "But they didn't."
>
> The NAACP managed to derail the Talented 20 for several months by
> challenging it in court. A judge ruled against the organization in July, a
> decision that is now under appeal.
>
> Despite the delay, university system officials say the Talented 20 still
> provided admissions officials with a valuable recruiting list.
>
> Except, apparently, at the University of Florida -- the toughest school in
> the state to get into, and one of the whitest.
>
> In every other state that banned racial preferences, the most dramatic
> impact was at elite schools, where admission standards are highest.
>
> Minority enrollment tumbled at both UCLA and the University of
> California-Berkeley after Connerly's initiative was approved. A similar
> decline occurred at the University of Washington after that state ended
> preferential admissions.
>
> Bush officials are confident that won't happen at UF.
>
> They say the ban on preferences has forced UF to step up its minority
> recruiting, form partnerships with low-performing high schools and change
> the way it evaluates applicants.
>
> In his news conference last week, Bush said those changes already are
> having an impact. As evidence, he cited a 33 percent increase among black
> freshmen enrolled at UF this summer and fall.
>
> But he made no claims for the Talented 20, which UF officials say has
> little value on their campus since almost all of their incoming students
> graduate at or near the top of their class.
>
> "If we take a student from the bottom half of a school's Talented 20, we
> would have to turn away someone else higher up," said UF admissions
> director Bill Kolb. "That wouldn't be fair."
>
> That's what worries the NAACP -- that minority students who would have been
> accepted at UF under racial preferences now will find themselves frozen
> out.
>
> Winn said that doesn't have to happen. Such students could still be
> admitted under "profile assessment," a new program that allows universities
> to enroll students for reasons other than race even if they don't meet
> minimum standards.
>
> Winn said he is confident UF will become more diverse under One Florida. To
> a considerable degree, his faith is rooted in Chancellor Herbert's warning
> that he intends to make minority enrollment a major factor in his annual
> evaluations of university presidents.
>
> "Forget all the altruistic stuff," Winn said. "It's going to be part of
> their pay package."
>
> 'Don't ask, don't tell'
>
> Profile assessment is one of the more intriguing aspects of the governor's
> strategy. It's viewed by many as a safety net, a way to ensure that
> minority numbers won't fall too far.
>
> Under profile assessment, the university system can admit up to 10 percent
> of its freshmen every year regardless of whether they meet minimum
> standards or make the Talented 20.
>
> Some will be athletes or artists, students with special talents that don't
> show up in grades or test scores. Some will be students who didn't earn one
> or more of the 19 core academic credits required for admission.
>
> In the past, two-thirds of the students admitted alternatively have been
> minorities.
>
> But that was when schools could cite race as a basis for admission. Under
> profile assessment, they must cite one of a host of other reasons,
> including socio-economic status, inner-city residence or the quality of an
> applicant's high school -- factors deliberately chosen because they
> correlate strongly with
> race.
>
> Opponents say it's hypocritical to ban the use of race in admissions, then
> allow the use of related factors to make sure minority enrollment doesn't
> decline.
>
> Democratic state Sen. Kendrick Meek, one of the African-American
> legislators who staged a sit-in last year to protest One Florida, has
> called the plan "don't ask, don't tell."
>
> Connerly, the California activist whom many think forced Bush's hand, says
> profile assessment appears to be a back-door route for getting less
> qualified African-Americans into the university system.
>
> "The governor has done away with de facto quotas, but he has remained
> focused on a particular outcome, a race-conscious outcome," Connerly said.
>
> Making a difference
>
> In order to properly evaluate the impact of the Talented 20, Bush aides say
> one other factor must be considered: The $20-million in additional state
> financial aid the governor tied to the guarantee.
>
> Bush said the 43 percent hike in the Florida Student Assistance Grant would
> help needy students take advantage of his promise of a freshman seat.
>
> The money is making a difference. For the first time in several years,
> every student who qualifies for the need-based program will receive the
> maximum award, which this year is $1,300.
>
> But will it be enough of a difference?
>
> The estimated cost of attending UF, for example, is about $11,000 annually.
> Even with a Bright Futures scholarship and the maximum in state and federal
> aid, a Talented 20 student who qualifies for need-based assistance will
> still be several thousand dollars short.
>
> And many won't be eligible: In most cases, a family income of more than
> $30,000 is enough to disqualify a student.
>
> "We have people on the upper end who can afford to go to school. We have
> people on the lowest end who qualify for help," said Karen Fooks, UF's
> financial aid director. "But you have a lot of people in the middle -- many
> of them in the Talented 20, many of them probably minority -- who won't be
> reached."
>
> Winn said loans and work study programs can make up the difference for many
> Talented 20 members. Those near a university, he said, can reduce costs by
> living at home.
>
> "This is not a guarantee that everyone will have their way paid," he said,
> "but that shouldn't minimize the significance of the (financial aid)
> increase."
>
> Reg Brown, an African-American and Bush's deputy general counsel, said:
> "You can't let the perfect be the enemy of the good."
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