Replacing Race-Conscious Admissions Policies
Are percentage plans the wave of the future?
By Kendra Hamilton

When President George W. Bush denounced the University of Michigan for maintaining a "quota" system for undergraduate and law admissions that was "divisive, unfair and impossible to square with the Constitution," he clearly signaled his desire that the U.S. Supreme Court "end, not mend" affirmative action.

But if the high court does opt to close the book on affirmative action when it considers two lawsuits involving Michigan admissions policies on April 1, a critical question remains: Is there anything to replace this much-criticized policy?

The answer, say key higher education analysts, policy watchdog groups as well as a raft of newly minted studies, appears to be: not at present.

So-called percentage plans have been touted as the wave of the future in diversifying college populations partly because they are popular with Whites and conservatives and partly because court challenges have led to their being adopted in three of the nation's most populous states: Texas in 1998, California in 1999 and Florida in 2000. Indeed, the Bush administration made sweeping claims about their virtues in its "friend of the court" brief filed with the Supreme Court last month.

But if the current administration is looking for a race-neutral policy, notes Dr. Bridget Long, assistant professor in Harvard University's Graduate School of Education, percentage plans are a problematic choice. "The only way they can work in practice is if the high schools are segregated in ways that we've said over and over again that we're committed to ending," she says.

More importantly, the evidence is mounting that the plans simply don't work.

That case is made in three recently released studies — separate analyses of the Texas "10 Percent Plan," the Florida "Talented 20" program plus a comparison of the three percentage plans.