Letters: Affirmative Action: Looking at the Data

Connect With Us on Twitter

For Op-Ed, follow @nytopinion and to hear from the editorial page editor, Andrew Rosenthal, follow @andyrNYT.

"Does Affirmative Action Do What It Should?," by Dan Slater (Sunday Review, March 17), wrongly portrays the evidence as evenly divided on "mismatch" — the theory that affirmative action can harm the minority students it's designed to help by admitting them to schools for which they are unqualified.

At the law school level, many respected scholars have detailed the methodological flaws in Richard H. Sander's 2005 article in The Stanford Law Review, which put forth the mismatch theory.

In the Fisher v. University of Texas affirmative action case before the Supreme Court, amicus briefs by a group of leading researchers and by the American Educational Research Association show that research over all undermines the mismatch hypothesis.

At the undergraduate level, a large body of evidence shows that attending a more selective university is associated with net gains in African-Americans' and Latinos' graduation rates.

What matters most is the cumulative weight of peer-reviewed social science research, and on that score the shortcomings of the mismatch hypothesis are conspicuously apparent.

WILLIAM KIDDER
Riverside, Calif., March 19, 2013

The writer, assistant provost at the University of California, Riverside, has published several articles about mismatch.

To the Editor:

We as a society have decided that college degrees from certain institutions are more valuable than others, and that the holders are best equipped to run the nation's economic, political and social life. Unless we decide that all college degrees confer the same access to power and influence, affirmative action is necessary.

As for affirmative action conferring a stigma on minority students: The stigma would not exist if we held all students to the same academic requirements from primary school on, and if we financed the public schools equally, engaged all parents consistently and stopped assuming that racial heritage has a correlation with intellectual capacity.

It is disingenuous and offensive to call for an end to affirmative action when we underfinance schools, fail to engage parents, establish two-track academic standards and traffic in racial stereotypes under the guise of education system analysis.

ROSILAND JORDAN
Washington, March 17, 2013

To the Editor:

Racism is America's original sin. Until we put as many young blacks in colleges as we do in jail, we should be expanding affirmative action.

Even if affirmative action has flaws, the criteria for abolishing it should be that we first find a better solution to the problem of persistent racism, and implement it to the fullest extent possible. Only then, when we know that solution is working, do we consider abolishing affirmative action.

JANE McALEVEY
Muir Beach, Calif., March 18, 2013

To the Editor:

Mismatch theory begins with a set of assumptions based largely on test scores. Researchers have shown that test scores have more to do with the size of one's parents' checking account than intellectual capabilities.

Researchers also know that the institutional climate makes a considerable difference in students' ability to achieve — for example, a welcoming environment, the willingness of students to work collaboratively across racial and ethnic lines, transparent grading rubrics and the expectation that faculty members view every student as worthy.

So it is not surprising that historically black colleges have had great success with black students in producing physicians, lawyers and scientists of international fame, more so than historically elite and majority white schools.

RANDAL MAURICE JELKS
Lawrence, Kan., March 17, 2013

The writer is an associate professor of American studies and African and African-American studies at the University of Kansas.

Anda sedang membaca artikel tentang

Letters: Affirmative Action: Looking at the Data

Dengan url

http://opinimasyarakota.blogspot.com/2013/03/letters-affirmative-action-looking-at.html

Anda boleh menyebar luaskannya atau mengcopy paste-nya

Letters: Affirmative Action: Looking at the Data

namun jangan lupa untuk meletakkan link

Letters: Affirmative Action: Looking at the Data

sebagai sumbernya