Backdoor Affirmative Action

By Rebecca Zwick

How can we counteract the plunge in the number of black and Latino students on our college campuses? This is the question faced by California educators since the passage in 1996 of Proposition 209, which banned consideration of race or ethnicity in admissions to public colleges and universities. Now, the state of Washington is beginning to confront the effects of Initiative 200, a clone of Proposition 209 that passed in November, and Texas continues to grapple with the effects of the Hopwood decision.

Last year, the University of California landed upon a simple solution to the decline in minority enrollment: Eliminate the SAT as an admissions criterion. "We ... have evidence that the SAT loses us 2,000 Latino students this year alone," Eugene Garcia, the dean of the school of education at Berkeley, said in a 1997 interview. Although enthusiasm for total elimination of the standardized-test requirement has waned, some California educators and lawmakers cling to the view that admissions testing is the primary barrier to campus diversity.

Would eradication of standardized admissions tests produce a more ethnically diverse freshman class? Recent evidence from several sources indicates the...