College Prep Study Results Puzzle Officials

More California high school students are taking steps to prepare for college but a smaller percentage of them are satisfactorily completing all the courses and tests required for admission to the state’s public universities, a new study shows.

Those mixed results released Monday startled state educational leaders who set eligibility standards for the University of California and California State University systems.

“It’s very confusing,” said Warren Fox, director of the California Postsecondary Education Commission, which surveyed 1996 high school graduates. “You have more students attempting to be college bound, but they didn’t make it. And we don’t know why.”

Educators are not sure if students are failing to pass required courses, dropping the tougher classes or are simply unaware of all required Scholastic Aptitude Tests.

To answer those questions and others, commissioners have agreed to join UC and Cal State officials to probe more deeply into the extensive data gleaned from surveying 15,352 transcripts from the 1996 high school class.

The commission’s study of university eligibility--the first conducted since 1990--is designed to determine if the state is following its master plan for higher education.

Under that plan, UC is supposed to accept the top 12.5% of the state’s public high school graduates and Cal State takes the top one-third.

But only 11.1% of 1996 high school graduates were eligible for UC and 29.6% for Cal State.

Compared to 1990, the drop in eligibility was steepest among African Americans: Only 2.8% of black high school graduates were eligible for UC, compared to 5.1% six years earlier.

That 45% drop, along with slight backsliding among Latino high school graduates, pointed out the difficulty for California’s educators to fulfill their goal of sending more black and Latino students to public universities without the use of affirmative action.

“We were tremendously disappointed in the drop in black eligibility,” said Dennis Galligani, UC’s assistant vice president for student academic services. In contrast, he was encouraged that Latino UC eligibility had dropped only 0.1% over six years to 3.8%, but said that the percentage was still far too low.

Moreover, Galligani said the new statistics show that it is “even more critical” for UC and others to step up their “outreach efforts”--after-school enrichment classes and other programs intended to keep disadvantaged students on track for college.

Asian American, a group known for its ambitious college prep plans, also showed a 6.8% decline in eligibility for UC, although Asian Americans still posted the highest levels of UC eligibility: 30%.

White public high school graduates remained the same at 12.7%.

All ethnic groups showed similar drops in eligibility for Cal State admission.

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In 1990, 18.6% of black high school graduates completed all of Cal State’s requirements; 17.3% of Latinos, 38.2% of whites and 61.5% of Asian Americans. In 1996, the numbers fell to 13.2% of black high school graduates; 13.4% of Latinos, 36.3% of whites and 54.4% of Asian Americans.

During that period, Cal State phased in tougher eligibility standards--requiring that high school students complete 15 courses, including four years of English and three years of math.

Because failure to complete all 15 classes was a major reason that students were ineligible for the state university, Cal State officials plan to review their admissions standards for possible revision, said Allison Jones, director of access and retention.

But mostly, Jones said, Cal State officials are confused by seemingly contradictory trends in the report: More students than ever are taking college prep classes and Scholastic Aptitude Tests (SATs) and Advance Placement tests.

“We don’t know why people are taking the right courses, but fewer of them are completing them,” Jones said. “We need to get out there and talk to students and their parents and find out why.”

UC also has toughened its admissions criteria since 1990, adding a second year of history, another year of laboratory science and bumping up the minimum grade-point average from 2.78 to 2.82.

But rather than being deficient in required courses, many students failed to take the required SAT II, which measures proficiency in advanced subjects such as chemistry, trigonometry and English composition. The researchers were not sure why the students did not take the test.

UC’s Galligani said the system will take a hard look at its admission requirements, but probably will not roll back its stiffer standards because they have drawn better prepared students who are much more likely to graduate.

Though eligibility rates have dropped since 1990, UC and Cal State schools have continued to admit about the same number of students because the overall number of California high school graduates has jumped more than 40,000 during that time.