4% Plan Rewards the Right Stuff

It didn’t take long. Within hours of Gov. Davis’ proposal to guarantee admission to the University of California to the top 4% of public high school graduates, the talk radio howling began: that this lets racial diversity trump “merit,” who cares about diversity?; that the 4% plan is just a way for unqualified minorities to end-run Proposition 209 (the anti-affirmative action initiative). Are these fears justified? No.

Let’s burden the racial ranting with a few facts from a state Senate committee’s simulation studies. First, the top 4% plan would leave the racial makeup of the eligibility pool virtually unchanged: blacks would remain the same at a dismal 2% and Latinos would rise 1 percentage point to a distressingly low 10%. The percentage of Asian Americans would remain at 28%. And whites would drop 1 point to 53%. Moreover, nothing in the plan touches Proposition 209’s directives. If Texas’ top 10% plan is any indicator, notable increases in diversity will probably be from rural schools.

Does the plan threaten “merit,” however narrowly and numerically defined? Unlikely. UC ranks and admits students by the “academic index,” about as close to “calculator merit” as it gets: AI = (GPA x 1000) + (2.5 x SAT verbal score + SAT math score). Under the 4% plan, the average index scores for eligible African American and Latino students would dip 70-80 points on UC’s 8,000 point scale. That’s equivalent to the difference between a 560 and 570 verbal SAT score or between a 3.55 and 3.52 GPA. Average index scores for Asian American students would drop 1 point. For white students, the average index scores would rise 9 meaningless points. No drop is good, but these are too small to be significant.

So if this plan is no dagger aimed at the heart of numeric merit, what’s it all about?

The top 4% plan is not about race. It’s about admitting to UC kids from each public high school who take the toughest courses their schools offer, work hard to meet UC course requirements and place in the top 4% of their graduating classes. It’s about four years of work being valued as much as one day of testing. In many cases, it’s about the tenacity and courage required to achieve in anti-achievement environments, qualities the SAT misses.

It’s also about taking the highest achievers from each site. That’s what Harvard, the National Merit scholarship program and the military do. Harvard admits the highest achieving students from every state, despite the fact that, on average, the calculator merit of students from Mississippi is lower than that of students from New York. The same people who administer the SAT ensure that every state has National Merit scholars--even though this means the cut-off scores differ by state. And the military academies take top students from every state.

None of these institutions sacrifices merit by valuing excellence across a spectrum of human experience; they choose the people who have done the most with their available opportunities and then invest in their success. UC is a public university that can do the same from every public high school.

UCLA and Berkeley admission formulas weight the SAT so heavily that they are unlikely to pick top 4% plan students. But many can complete a four-year degree at other UC campuses. Will some students have academic deficiencies? Yes, and some will have gaps too wide to close. Most, however, will be like the other post-209 UC admittees with linguistic and other academic gaps who, with the right support, earn their degrees.

Finally, the top 4% plan is not an alternative to overdue reform. It is one side of the achievement coin. At a time when the state is proposing “sticks” (e.g., the rigorous high school exit exam), it also should offer a “carrot,” the incentive of UC eligibility for those who strive to the very top of their class.