Affirmative Lifelines

Affirmative action in UC admissions is dead. When voters passed the statewide ballot initiative Proposition 209 in 1996, they effectively prohibited state universities and colleges from considering race, ethnicity or gender in deciding which students to admit. So while the regents’ repeal on Wednesday of their previous ban on racial preferences drew cheers from the 120 students who had gathered, it will have little real impact.

With that symbolic act behind them, the regents should get back to the work of assuring that the UC system is not only the best but also the most open and accessible public university system in the world.

The more difficult work, however, now falls to others in the state. In the shortest possible time Californians need to guarantee that all the state’s parents understand the importance of education and that the state’s public schools offer such solid instruction that even the most selective UC campuses will have no choice but to select a student population that will naturally reflect the state’s diversity.

We owe a top-notch education not only to today’s kindergartners but to sixth-graders and even 10th-graders, all of whom deserve a real shot at UCLA and UC Berkeley.

So far, many remain out of luck. A study released Thursday by the nonprofit group Californians for Justice found that Latino and African American students in particular are routinely unable to get classes that would allow them to meet the most basic college eligibility requirements. Gifted and advanced programs simply aren’t there.

For black and Latino enrollment to improve will require a commitment, as President Bush would put it (borrowing a Children’s Defense Fund line), “to leave no child behind.”

Already, Californians are scrambling to throw the state’s children educational lifelines. Professors at UC Santa Barbara, for example, have launched an ambitious program to boost minority enrollment in four-year colleges by teaching families that may not value education about college options and assigning university students to mentor elementary students.

“We feel there is a really urgent situation out there and we want to do something about it,” UC Santa Barbara sociology professor Denise Segura told Times staff writer Jenifer Ragland. “Latinos represent a majority of schoolchildren in California, yet only 4% are eligible to attend UC campuses. That is just not acceptable.”

No, it’s not. And more and more people are becoming impatient with the bureaucracies that should be accelerating change. Even in the foundering Los Angeles Unified School District, energetic individuals are pushing through encouraging new programs. At the Accelerated School, a public charter school in South-Central L.A., test scores jumped 35% in reading and 28% in math last year. Students, on average, scored above the 50th percentile in reading and math, although nearly all qualify for the free lunch program. Scores have nearly doubled since 1997 at the school, recently named Time magazine’s elementary school of the year.

Will all of Accelerated’s students get into UCLA or UC Berkeley? No. But at least they will have a fair shot.

Can any Californian not feel a measure of shame that this state’s wealthy and middle-class children are able to outperform the state’s poorer children in large part because the public school system doesn’t offer equal education to all? With affirmative action gone, lawmakers, educators and citizens have to work harder and faster to fix the problem of inequality at the front end.