Study Says Student Aid Plan Favors Middle Class

By AMY PYLE

Jan. 24, 2000 12 AM PT

TIMES STAFF WRITER

SACRAMENTO — A UCLA study of a key component of Gov. Gray Davis’ merit scholarship proposal has found that recipients would be mostly middle-class whites and Asians.

The study, backed by civil rights attorneys who believe the scholarship money would be better spent by developing more college prep courses for blacks and Latinos in inner-city schools, analyzed Davis’ proposal by focusing on Santa Monica High School, whose diversity closely mirrors the rest of California. The results suggest there is a political powder keg in the making for Davis--especially among liberals, who say the plan is discriminatory.

The governor’s proposal, announced earlier this month, would provide $1,000 scholarships in ninth, 10th and 11th grades to students who score in the top 10% statewide on the standardized STAR test or the top 5% of the scores at their school. Additional bonuses would go to those same students if they achieved perfect scores on advanced placement calculus and science tests.

Eighty-four of Santa Monica High’s 11th-graders who took the STAR test last year scored in the top 10% statewide. Of those, 72 were white, nine Asian, two African American and one Latino.

The study, by education professor Jeannie Oakes, did not assess the impact of the second threshold: ranking in the top 5% at the school, a measure intended to help counter any inequities. The researchers acknowledge that students who make that cut would be more likely to represent California’s ethnic and economic diversity.

But Oakes, associate dean of UCLA’s Graduate School of Education, suggested that a school’s top 5% should be the only criterion for the scholarship. Aiding those with the top 10% test scores statewide would simply double rewards at schools that “have had the resources to build strong academic infrastructure while others have not,” she said.

The UCLA researchers targeted the merit scholarship funds because they believe the money would be better spent improving both the quality and quantity of college preparatory courses--particularly advanced placement courses--at schools serving low-income areas.

Santa Monica High Principal Sylvia Rousseau said even the top 5% of her school’s scorers would not include a significant number of low-income minorities.

“The cards are stacked before a kid even begins and . . . the results are highly predictable,” Rousseau said. “I’m not saying that those kids shouldn’t be rewarded, but it doesn’t do much to change the way education is provided.”

Santa Monica High’s student body is 49% white, 32% Latino, 12% black and 7% Asian; statewide figures are 39% white, 41% Latino, 9% black and 8% Asian.

About 21% of last year’s 11th-graders at Santa Monica qualified for free and reduced-price lunches, a generally accepted indicator of poverty. Children eligible for the subsidy must have a family income of $31,000 or less for a family of four. Statewide, about 19% of 11th-graders qualify.

None of those poorer 11th-graders at Santa Monica High would have reached the 10% score cutoff for scholarships.

If the results from Santa Monica High were applied to all of Los Angeles, Oakes said, a dearth of scholarships would result across a large swath ranging from Hawthorne to La Puente, Paramount to Pacoima.

“Almost no comprehensive California high schools serving predominantly low-income African American and Latino students [would] receive any merit scholarships above and beyond those scholarships earmarked for the top 5% of students at these schools,” Oakes wrote.

The state estimates that 100,000 students would qualify annually at a cost of about $118 million.

Assembly Speaker Antonio Villaraigosa (D-Los Angeles) said the Legislature would have to consider ways to ensure that the program reached Californians of all ethnicities.

“I agree with the governor that we need to reward excellence,” Villaraigosa said.

Davis spokesman Michael Bustamante said the governor was not aware of the study. He criticized it for looking at “one-half of a program.” The top 5% measure, patterned after a similar UC admissions policy, may well balance the ethnicity of recipients, he said, though he acknowledged the state has no data to prove that.

“These guys ought to come down off their tower and get down into the real world here,” Bustamante said of the UCLA researchers. “You have parents making $55,000, even $60,000 or more a year, and they’re deprived of CalGrants [state scholarships based on need]. If they have two kids, which kid is going to go?”

There is four times as much state money available for need-based scholarships as there is for the new merit program, Bustamante said. This week Davis pledged to preserve that 4-1 ratio, though he added he would rather have it 1-1, “but I don’t want to shock people.”

Davis has repeatedly defended his plan by saying there are very few affluent students in public schools today anyway.

“We’re talking about the sons and daughters of firemen and policemen and small businessmen and women and tailors,” he said at an education conference last week. “Those children ought to have a chance . . . for a merit-based scholarship.”

Although some rich students have indeed fled public schools, enrollment in private schools statewide is actually on the decline.

Oakes’ study grew out of a lawsuit that the American Civil Liberties Union filed last year alleging that black and Latino students are illegally disadvantaged in the competition for seats at University of California campuses because their schools do not offer as many advanced placement courses as schools with predominantly white students.

Although 144 of the state’s top high schools offer 14 or more AP courses, the ACLU found that 177 schools at the bottom offer none. Completion of AP courses is almost essential for students seeking admission to UC Berkeley, UCLA and other selective campuses.

As part of discussions aimed at settling the suit, Mark Rosenbaum, the lawyer handling the case for the ACLU, asked Oakes to study what would need to be done to end the disparities in AP course offerings.

Davis has put $20.5 million in his budget to expand AP courses--in part by making them available over the Internet. Oakes believes $70 million would be needed to do the job, and would provide the money by using the $50 million Davis would like to spend on his merit scholarship plan.

State officials have been studying the proposal. But in the meantime, Oakes’ ideas are drawing support from liberal legislators.

Sen. Tom Hayden (D-Los Angeles) has asserted that Davis’ proposals favor suburbanites while ignoring the deeper needs of urban school districts.

The preliminary UCLA results, said Hayden--whose children attended Santa Monica High--bolster his assumption that the program will allocate “bonuses to largely wealthy and high-achieving students who in all likelihood will go to college anyway.”

“At many, many schools in the state, not a single student will be in the top 10%--not a single student,” he said. “This is something the Legislature is going to have to deal with.”

In a letter sent to Davis on Friday, Hayden noted that the governor’s budget repeatedly mentions “low performance” instead of racism, discrimination or inequality.

“Can a battle for educational reform really be fought without recognition of poverty and racism as factors in causing this low performance?” Hayden’s letter asked.

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Student Disparity

Race or ethnicity od Santa Monica High 11th-graders in top 10% statewide on 1999 STAR test:

White: 85.7%

Asian: 10.7%

Latino: 1.2%

African American: 2.4%

Race or ethnicity of all Santa Monica High 11th-graders in 1999:

White: 45.7%

Asian: 5.8%

Latino: 33.5%

African American: 14.4%