Racial Policy for Admission to S.F. School Altered

Addressing an unusual controversy over racial preferences, the San Francisco Board of Education revamped the admissions policy at its premier academic high school to eliminate a requirement that held Chinese American students to a higher standard than whites and other racial and ethnic groups.

Beginning this fall, race will not be a factor in admissions for the majority of students admitted to Lowell High School, the oldest and one of the most prestigious public high schools west of the Mississippi. The sole criteria will be grades and test scores for 70% to 80% of the upcoming freshman class.

But the school board also created a second category of admissions in which race and socioeconomic status, among other factors, will be considered.

“This district is saying that the discriminatory admissions must end,” Supt. Waldemar Rojas said Wednesday. “But we’re also saying a lot of talented students can’t be judged just by the benchmarks of scores and grades. We have to define merit in a broader way.”

The new guidelines, adopted in a unanimous vote late Tuesday night, require the majority of entering freshmen to score at least 63 on a 69-point scale based on grade-point averages and standardized test scores. Previously, Chinese Americans had to score 63, whites 60, and Latinos, blacks and Native Americans 55.

For the remaining 20% to 30% of the entering freshmen, however, the floor for admission could be as low as 55 points, and possibly as low as 50 for some students.

Students can be admitted in this so-called “value-added diversity” pool on the basis of socioeconomic status, difficulty of courses taken, extracurricular load and special challenges such as illness.

This category also includes special consideration for Native Americans, Latinos and blacks, “recognizing the historical racial discrimination against these communities.”

The revised policy, which only pertains to Lowell, appeared to satisfy most of the warring parties in the protracted dispute over Lowell admissions, including the NAACP and the local Chinese American Democratic club.

“Why should Chinese American students be punished?” said Roland Quan, head of the group that led the fight against the differential standards and that is still pursuing a broader lawsuit against the district to eliminate racial quotas in its desegregation plan. “I think this is a move in the right direction.”

But Ward Connerly, the University of California regent who spearheaded the campaign against racial preferences at UC--and who has cited the Lowell controversy as an example of the problems with affirmative action--suggested that the changes did not go far enough.

“The overarching question out there,” he said, “is how can you morally justify having low hurdles for some students and high hurdles for others?”

The debate over Lowell in many respects mirrored the broader national argument over affirmative action.

Critics of the old policy said it debased the meaning of merit, while supporters said it was needed to ensure diversity in Lowell’s student body.

But instead of whites crying foul, it was Chinese Americans who claimed discrimination. Quan and others said the old system not only was unfair but caused many Chinese American youngsters to feel ashamed of their heritage.

Chinese American students, who make up about a quarter of the San Francisco Unified School District, tend to apply, qualify and accept admission to Lowell in the greatest numbers.

But a court-approved desegregation plan prohibits any racial or ethnic group from comprising more than about 40% of the student body at an alternative school, such as Lowell. Many Chinese Americans were rejected by Lowell, even though their scores were as good as those attained by whites and other ethnicities who were admitted.

“This change in our policy will set the record straight,” said school board member Leland Yee. “It says that you’re not unlucky to be born under the star of Chinese. You’re going to be treated just as equally as anybody else.”