In this article, Michele Moses and Lauren Saenz explore a growing trend in education policymaking--the ballot initiative. Specifically, the authors question whether information presented to voters is sufficiently substantive to permit educated decisionmaking about influential policies. Their study, a content analysis of print news media related to…

Using a critical race theory framework, this study examines the ways in which race and racialized ideologies are manifested in high-stakes college admissions, the debate over affirmative action, and the college choice behavior of Black high school students. This study allows for the voices of Black high school students in California to describe…

Opponents of higher education affirmative action programs are gearing up to launch their largest attack in recent years. The planned assault comes in the wake of the recent U.S. Supreme Court ruling that severely limited the use of race in K-12 integration plans. It was Ward Connerly, the chairman of the American Civil Rights Institute, a…

While colleges and legal analysts are focusing on what to do in the post-Hopwood world, some of us are still asking whether a move away from affirmative action was a prudent move from the beginning. Is it fair for society to move away from supporting students who have not had an equitable chance at the educational brass ring just because, in most…

Introduces a theme issue that includes a collection of articles on work being done to prevent movement backward in efforts to gain equal educational opportunity for minority group students, discussing affirmative action, racial discrimination and bias, and equity in higher education (with a focus on California's efforts to roll back affirmative…

This article suggests that previous bans on race-based affirmative action have done serious damage to black enrollments at the U.S.'s "flagship" public universities. In some cases, black enrollments have rebounded somewhat, but enrollments are still far below the level that prevailed prior to the bans. Only Texas, with its 10 Percent…

The employment practices of most employers still result in the underutilization of female and minority workers. One of the major reasons is the lack of enforcement of affirmative action regulations. Some of the problems of enforcement have been tackled in new and innovative ways by the Legal Aid Society of Alameda County. (Author/MC)

Considers how current university-school partnerships point the way toward the most potentially transformative areas of programming in education today. Describes the key developments in the past few years in California regarding the Humanities Out There (HOT) program. (SC)

The importance of diversity and inclusion to higher education was the focus of intense legal and social scientific analysis in the decisions of the United States Supreme Court concerning affirmative action at the University of Michigan. The leadership of higher education and several other sectors of society offered overwhelming support, and a…

Most U.S. citizens support the elimination of race and gender prejudice and inequality, yet attitudes toward solutions have fluctuated in the years since the civil rights movement began. California, a state that has set precedent for antidiscrimination initiatives since 1934, is now at the center of struggles over affirmative action. The authors…

Analyzes plans of some states (California, Florida, and Texas) to admit top high school graduates to public colleges and universities as a way to promote diversity without affirmative action programs. Critics claim such plans exploit educational segregation while doing nothing to improve schools, and may create inequities by denying admission to…

Eliminating the Scholastic Aptitude Test for college admissions might seem a form of covert affirmative action. Although it is possible to design a workable admissions policy that excludes standardized tests (as 15 percent of colleges have done), banishing admissions tests to further a social-policy goal indirectly is unsound policy. (Contains 25…

This article examines the attitudes of baccalaureate aspiring community college students with regard to affirmative action in college admissions. Using data from UCLA's Cooperative Institutional Research Program (CIRP) Annual Freshman Year Survey, the study assessed determinants of approval or disapproval of affirmative action for 20,339 community…

Reports on increasing efforts of universities, especially those in states where racial preferences in admissions have been outlawed, to recruit more minority students by soliciting transfer students from local community colleges. Some institutions are easing admissions policies for transfer students, holding "diversity fairs," and…

This quarterly report of the Faculty and Staff Diversity (FSD) Unit of the Chancellors Office of the California Community Colleges presents the 1988-89 objectives of the unit and the actions taken to meet them during the first quarter of the year. The objectives include: (1) the analysis of FSD expenditures by districts during 1988-89; (2) the…