Test scores and grades don’t tell universities enough about a prospective student, and there’s a need for race-conscious outreach and recruitment to bring more diverse students onto campus.<\/p>\n
So argued two leading researchers of Asian American issues in higher education Monday at the national seminar of the Education Writers Association.<\/p>\n
\u201cThe idea that grades and test scores are objective is debatable,\u201d said Robert Teranishi, education professor at UCLA’s Asian American Studies Center.<\/p>\n
He cited recent changes to the College Board’s SAT as evidence that the college entrance exam lacks validity.<\/p>\n
\u201cIf it were perfect in defining merit, why would they change it?\u201d Teranishi said.<\/p>\n
Although Asian Americans are statistically seen as high achievers, Teranishi reiterated longstanding concerns about how the heterogeneity of Asian Americans often gets overlooked to the detriment of Asian American students who hail from groups\u2014such as Southeast Asians\u2014that struggle academically.<\/p>\n
Teranishi was joined in his stance by OiYan Poon, assistant higher education professor at Loyola University Chicago School of Education, who argued that universities often employ criteria in admissions that favor White students\u2014such as geography and residence\u2014and fail to capture important information about minority students by simply looking at grades and test scores.<\/p>\n
\u201cSAT test scores tell us about 5 percent of variance in first-year college grades,\u201d Poon said. \u201cEven the College Board is questioning what do these test scores tell us.\u201d<\/p>\n
While high school grades are much better at predicting first-year grades in college, Poon said, first-year grades in college are not a meaningful enough measure of a student’s potential.<\/p>\n
Haibo Huang, a Harvard-educated physicist who serves as a California-based board director for the 80-20 National Asian American PAC, said he agreed with the need for affirmative action based on socioeconomic status but drew the line at using race.<\/p>\n
Huang spent much of his time explaining his position against SCA5, the technical name for the recently defeated Senate Constitutional Amendment in California that would have let voters decide whether to reinstate race-conscious affirmative action in higher education.<\/p>\n
While proponents said the measure was necessary to achieve diversity on campuses in California, Huang dismissed SCA5 as a \u201cfraud distraction.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cThe real issue in this whole debate is the pipeline issue of high school students that are graduating,\u201d Huang said, lamenting that international student assessment scores consistently show the U.S. lagging behind other developed nations. \u201cAnd this must be fixed earlier than college admission.\u201d<\/p>\n
Conservative writer Ron Unz noted that, how when SCA5 was first introduced, it was assumed that it would garner Asian American support.<\/p>\n
But once \u201cordinary Asian Americans\u201d began to learn about the proposed measure, he said, they opposed it because of concern that they were being discriminated against in elite institutions.<\/p>\n
Teranishi countered that \u201cthere is no \u2018ordinary Asian’\u201d and listed the dozens of ethnicities, hundreds of languages and various immigration histories and experiences that fall within the group known as AAPIs, or Asian American and Pacific Islanders.<\/p>\n
Unz said there’s plenty of evidence to suggest Asian Americans are being denied access in the Ivy League schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cI didn’t find a smoking gun,\u201d Unz said of his efforts to document discrimination against Asian Americans at America’s top universities. \u201cI found a smoking Howitzer.\u201d<\/p>\n
Unz presented statistics that show that, while the number or percentage of Asian Americans has increased in recent years, the same is not true of Asian American enrollment at the Ivy League schools.<\/p>\n
\u201cYou have to really ask yourself: Isn’t it odd that the number or percentage of Asian students has doubled, while enrollment (of Asians) has declined at some of the Ivy League schools?\u201d Unz said.<\/p>\n
He accused the Ivy League schools of keeping the data on the ethnicity of their applicant pools shrouded in secrecy and challenged reporters to pry the data loose.<\/p>\n
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