Cal State to Consider Tightening Admissions : Education: Trustees will weigh proposal to deny admittance to students who lack college readiness in math and English. Such a policy would disqualify up to 60% of today’s freshman class.

In a move that critics say could dramatically reduce college opportunities, especially for minorities, Cal State University officials are considering a proposal to deny admission beginning in 2001 to students who cannot demonstrate college readiness in math and English.

If such a policy were in place now, it could disqualify up to 60% of Cal State’s entire freshman class. And the impact would fall disproportionately on minority students, who have traditionally scored lower on the skills tests that would be used.

The controversial proposal, to be aired Tuesday at a Cal State trustees meeting in Long Beach, is part of a package of reforms aimed at virtually eliminating the need for remedial education courses in the 320,000-student, 22-campus university system by the turn of the century.

Some of the system’s Los Angeles-area campuses--including Los Angeles, Dominguez Hills and Northridge--would be severely affected because they have among the highest rates of students needing remedial help. For example, 80% of Cal State L.A.’s freshmen were found unprepared for college-level English courses in 1993.

Under the proposed policy, which experts called unusual for a state university system, freshmen applicants would have to pass standardized English and math tests or some similar assessment to gain admission, regardless of their grade-point average or other factors.

Most incoming freshmen now take those same tests only for placement purposes, and low-scoring students are required to enroll in remedial classes.

Cal State Trustee Ralph Pesqueira, the San Diego businessman who is spearheading the policy change, said the intent is not to shut the doors of educational opportunity, but rather to send a wake-up call to the state’s public schools that they must do a better job of preparing students.

The proposal was prompted in part by some trustees’ reluctance to continue funding courses to deal with what they see as the shortcomings of public schools. The system spends $10 million of its $1.55-billion state budget annually on remedial level classes.

“What we’ve got here is a state public education system that for 101 reasons has found it easier to move the conveyor belt of [underprepared] students along. We want to put a stop to that,” said Pesqueira, who noted that students and schools will have six years to improve before the change.

However, several prominent higher education authorities and the Cal State student association called the proposal unrealistic and unwise. And they said vast numbers of students could be turned away, marking a historic retreat from the system’s mandate to admit the top third of state high school graduates.

Even a Cal State staff memo earlier this year noted that while some access adjustments might be made, “there appears to be no way of capturing the ‘upper-one-third’ while still maintaining the mathematics and English placement standards” that now exist in the two tests.

Unless adjustments are made, “you’re going to cut off a huge segment of the higher education population,” said Esther Rodriguez, associate executive director of the State Higher Education Executive Officers Assn., a national group. “Sometimes students, if they’re not accepted, they may not keep going.”

The new admissions requirement would “reduce access and keep a lot of people out of the university who could benefit from a university education,” added Eric Mitchell, a June graduate of Humboldt State who is now director of university affairs for the California State Student Assn.

CSU Chancellor Barry Munitz said that because the board is not slated to take any action on the proposal, it is too early to gauge the support for the phasing out of remedial education.

Munitz said he has yet to make up his own mind on the issue.

“I want to hear the board’s conversation,” Munitz said. “And I want to hear the others--students, administrators and so on--who have asked to speak.”

In 1993, the most current year of placement exam statistics, more than 13,000 of the 22,013 freshmen admitted--or 60% of Cal State’s incoming freshman class--failed exams in English or math or both and had to take remedial courses. Among minorities, about 70% of all Asian, black and Mexican American freshmen failed to achieve college-level scores on the English placement test, compared to only 23% of all white freshmen, according to Cal State statistics.

On the math test in 1993, 77% of black students and 58% of Mexican Americans failed, while the rate was 42% for whites and 34% for Asians.

Under the proposal, the remedial classes those students now attend would be canceled and the students would not be admitted as freshmen. They could, however, attend community colleges and later transfer to a Cal State campus without having to take the test.

Minority college students have long trailed whites in scoring on many standardized tests, with educators blaming differences in parental education, family income and school quality.

But university remedial programs designed to help students catch up have come under increasing attack nationally in recent years.

Pesqueira and other trustees have argued that students unable to pass the tests should be sent to community colleges instead of the state’s universities. But critics say many such students are bright and capable, and just lack skills in a narrow area or are handicapped by being non-native English speakers.

Cal State spokesman Stephen MacCarthy discounted speculation that the change would disqualify up to 60% of the university’s freshmen. That prediction does not take into account the fact that Cal State officials have promised to work with the public schools to improve students’ skills in the coming years, he said.

Cal State officials are proposing administering the English and math tests to students while they are still in high school to enable them to gauge their skills early on. And those needing help may be able to work with Cal State faculty and students to improve their skills before taking the entrance exams.

But some remain skeptical that the college system can do much to reverse the trend. A decade ago, Cal State officials recognized the growing problem of unprepared students and drafted a five-year plan to reduce the need for remedial offerings. But when the issue resurfaced last year, they discovered the rates of unprepared freshmen continued to grow steadily through the 1990s.

Experts such as Peter Ewell, a researcher at the nonprofit National Center for Higher Education Management Systems in Colorado, say CSU’s plan to reach out to high schools is unlikely to reduce the problem of unprepared students significantly in the six years before the new policy would take hold.

“With the demographics the way they are, [the failure rate is] going to accelerate,” Ewell said. “I would say it would be unusual if they can pull it off. It’s going to be a tough road.”

The proposed policy is due to be discussed by Cal State trustees Tuesday, but trustees are not expected to vote on its adoption until January, officials said.