Bush plan could cut kids with top grades

High GPAs at top performing schools might fall below the 20 percent ensured a university spot.

By BARRY KLEIN and STEPHEN HEGARTY

© St. Petersburg Times, published November 14, 1999

The graduating seniors at St. Petersburg's Dixie Hollins High School will love Gov. Jeb Bush's plan for doing away with racial preferences in university admissions.

Any Dixie Hollins senior who graduates with at least a 3.27 grade point average -- a standard that would put them in the top 20 percent of their class -- will be guaranteed a spot next fall at one of Florida's 10 public universities.

But seniors at Palm Harbor University High School will need at least a 3.97 GPA to earn the same guarantee. According to current rankings, that's what it takes to be among the top 20 percent at the affluent, north Pinellas County school.

Officials say such wide disparities in student performance are the norm at high schools in the Tampa Bay area and around the state. But those differences are raising questions about the fairness of the governor's plan to eliminate race as a factor in university admissions.

Bush wants to replace the current system with a flat promise that any student who graduates in the top fifth of their class will be admitted into a Florida university.

He says his proposal will promote "equity in education." But even supporters concede key elements are likely to have an unequal impact, particularly on individual students.

His 20 percent guarantee, for example, means a student who earned high grades at a top-rated high school could be squeezed out of a university seat by a student who got lower grades at a less competitive school.

The student with higher grades also could lose out on financial aid. Under Bush's plan, students who graduate in the top 20 percent of their class go to the head of the line for need-based financial assistance.

Supporters say any adjustments that are necessary will be made as Bush's plan is translated into reality. And students who don't make the top 20 percent can get in through the existing, competitive application process.

"There is no system that is completely fair," said Steven Uhlfelder, a member of the state Board of Regents, which will consider Bush's plan to change university admissions guidelines at a meeting this week. "The devil is always in the details."

But some school administrators, who are just beginning to digest those details, have serious concerns.

"I'm sure a lot of people won't think this is fair at all," said Paula Hilderbrand, an assistant principal at St. Petersburg High School, where the 20-percent cutoff would mean that students need a 3.86 GPA to be guaranteed a seat at a university.

"This means a student with a pretty good grade point average at our school won't get in, but would have gotten in at another school," Hilderbrand said. "I could see people moving from school to school."

Steve Knellinger, an assistant principal at Dixie Hollins, questioned the wisdom of basing university admissions on a relative standard. "Taking the top 20 percent sounds easy, but they don't really know what they'll be getting," Knellinger said.

A delicate calculus

Twinned with his proposal to halt minority set-asides in state contracts, the governor is hoping to find a middle ground that will ensure diversity in higher education. Many observers say his other goal is to head off Ward Connerly's push for a vote to ban affirmative action

Herb Harmon, the campaign manager for Connerly's drive, said his group is still studying the 20-percent admission plan. But some drawbacks are obvious, he said.

"If you insist on a plan that accepts the top 20 percent from even underperforming schools, you are likely to be accepting students that have no business in a university," Harmon said.

A few states already have implemented guarantees similar to the one proposed for Florida.

California, which approved a statewide ban on racial preferences three years ago, now automatically admits the top 4 percent of its graduates. In Texas, where Bush's brother George W. is the governor, the top 10 percent are guaranteed admission.

University officials in Florida said Bush aides considered 10 percent and 15 percent guarantees. But each was discarded after computer runs showed neither would produce an adequate level of student diversity.

They finally settled on 20 percent, coupled with a requirement that students also complete a college preparatory curriculum.

Even after all the manipulations, officials say the impact of the 20-percent guarantee is likely to be relatively small. At most, it will add 1,200 black and Hispanic students to Florida's 10 universities next fall.

"That's not much when you're talking about a system that enrolls about 220,000 students," said university system spokesman Keith Goldschmidt.

Unless you are one of those additional 1,200 who soon could receive a guaranteed invitation. Or one of the unknown number of students who may find themselves searching for financial aid because they couldn't crack the top 20 percent at their school.

A safety net

"This connects us to Florida's future," Herbert said at the news conference where Bush announced the plan Tuesday. "We are convinced this plan will not only allow us to sustain our current levels of diversity, but actually increase them.

Not coincidentally, the plan also is expected to lead to increased funding for the university system.

Uhlfelder was among several regents who said they were told a guarantee of money for increased enrollment was something Herbert insisted upon. They said the chancellor wants to increase access to higher education, not redistribute access.

The 20-percent guarantee is not the only change being proposed for admissions. The governor's plan also calls for the elimination of what are known as alternative admits, a program that for years has allowed Florida universities to cite racial diversity as a reason for accepting applicants who do not meet minimum admission standards.

Last year, 3,270 students, or 11.7 percent of the freshmen admitted statewide, came in as alternative admits. Diversity was the reason stated for about one-third of those admissions.

Herbert said the alternative admit program will be replaced by a new "student profile assessment" that will not use race or ethnic background as a reason for admission. But both Bush and Herbert were clear about their intent to use the new program as a kind of safety net to ensure against calamitous declines in minority enrollment.

Instead of race, universities would be allowed to use factors such as applicants' socioeconomic status, which correlates strongly with race, to determine whether they could be admitted.

That flexibility could prove important to the University of Florida, the state's most prestigious university. When California banned racial preferences, there was a major decline in minority enrollment at the state's research universities, where admission standards are most rigorous.

David Colburn, the interim provost at UF, said Herbert has assured UF administrators they will have adequate tools to maintain at least current levels of diversity. Six percent of UF's current enrollment is African-American; 9.4 percent is Hispanic.

Herbert also intends to put together a task force that will identify problems associated with the governor's plan.

But that won't happen before the Board of Regents votes on the proposal this week -- only nine days after it was first presented by the governor.

Unanswered questions

St. Petersburg High's Hilderbrand wondered if it might touch off a flurry of transfers among schools, as students discover that a grade point average that falls short at one school is high enough to make the top 20 percent somewhere else

That sort of freewheeling movement is less likely in Pinellas County, which has a restrictive transfer policy. But many school districts are striving to offer more choices to parents.

If it does touch off a blitz of transfer requests, the logical movement would be from high-performing schools to low-performers, where a decent grade point average would count for more. That phenomenon could serve to counteract the tendency to move up from low-performing schools -- a trend many think is being exacerbated by Bush's controversial school-grading policy.

It is unclear whether magnet schools and International Baccalaureate programs would take up the lion's share of the "Talented 20" admissions.

"Are most of those kids IB kids?" Hilderbrand asked of her school's numbers. "Does that mean they're bumping kids from the non-IB?"

The alternative -- taking 20 percent from an IB program and 20 percent from the remaining students -- would result in a greater number of guaranteed university slots for schools with specialized programs such as IB or magnets.

Another concern among educators is that the plan doesn't hold out a clear and consistent goal for students. The Bright Futures scholarship program does; a student must graduate with a specific grade point average to qualify.

Not so the proposed admissions guarantee.

Said Dixie Hollins' Knellinger: "It could be a 3.2 one year, and a 3.4 the next."

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